Author Archives: Dave Poulson

Innovative workshop communication challenge


By David Poulson
This video represents an intriguing challenge: How do you engage people with an unusual workshop that they didn’t attend?
It’s one of the communication projects that grew out of the Knight Center’s work with Michigan State University’s Global Center for Food Systems Innovation (GCFSI). The challenge of that work is to translate research into methods of better feeding the world in ways that engages the public.
In January GCFSI brought together food researchers from throughout the world to discuss not only their innovative ideas, but innovative mechanisms for fostering and then implementing such ideas.
This video distills and captures that effort.

Being there

Rocky Flats elk herd. Image: Michael Kodas

Rocky Flats elk herd. Image: Michael Kodas


By Eric Freedman
On arrival, Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is, frankly, uninviting. A bevy of heavy trucks heading to and from the adjacent aggregates mining site churn up clouds of dust as they pass the multi-padlocked refuge gate A faded sign with the US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) logo announces “AREA BEYOND THIS SIGN CLOSED. All public entry prohibited.” Just outside the refuge entrance, RVs are crowded into a storage area at the edge of an underground natural gas pipeline. Six white wind turbines tower incongruously nearby.
I couldn’t have written that vivid description of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado– the place where all of the country’s plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons had been manufactured during the Cold War and later a heavily contaminated Superfund site — unless I’d been there. Continue reading →

MSU J-School alum credits CNS for launching career

Derek Wallbank chats with a student in the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. Image: Barb Miller

Derek Wallbank chats with a student in the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. Image: Barb Miller


By Colleen Otte
It was spring 2006 and journalism student Derek Wallbank’s final semester at Michigan State University.
He was set to graduate and didn’t have a single published clip.
“I bet that going to CNS would get me the clips that I needed to get a job, and if I was wrong, I was screwed,” Wallbank said. “But CNS is awesome, and I wasn’t wrong.”
CNS – Capital News Service – is an MSU class where students cover state government for news organizations across Michigan.
Wallbank is now team leader of the First Word breaking news desk for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Government in Washington, DC. Continue reading →